Music Arsenal Blog

Just wanted to give everyone a quick heads up on the new version of Music Arsenal and our progress. The private beta is going great and we'll be opening up some more invites very soon so make sure you signup.

We have over 1000 hand gathered, quality contacts in the Music Arsenal directory now. There are a variety of magazines, blogs, record stores, college radio stations and more. This directory is growing very fast so check back often for updates.

We're also working on redesigning a couple of the contact pages to make them easier to navigate as well as adding functionality for advanced searches and mailing label printing.

Thanks to everyone for your suggestions so far, you've helped us a lot!

I purchased the Before the Music Dies DVD after recently seeing snippets of a public showing at Omaha music venue, The Waiting Room. I finally got around to watching it last night and I must say I was very impressed.

The documentary revolves around the changing industry in both the major label and radio play/ownership. It began with discussions with major artists (Dave Matthews, Erika Badu and more) about the fabrication of teen idols and how many of the true music talents are being passed over for pushing a bubblegum act to make a quick buck. It also had several acts commenting on the consolidation of radio and playlists being shrunk to certain songs that have passed the group evaluation and universal market appeal tests. I think the most important points made in the movie were about the music and radio industries hurting themselves in the long run by paying more attention about making money now rather than having long term vision for their artists and companies.

Its clear that long term artist development of the 60s, 70s and 80s is a thing of the past. If an artist doesn't write that hit single or their album doesn't meet sales expectations chances are they'll be dropped for the next flavor.

If you have 90 minutes to spare and would like to check out an interesting documentary about the changing industry I highly suggest Before The Music Dies.

After the announcement that Ozzfest will be "free" for concert goers this year there has been much discussion on how this will affect the artists playing the shows. One thing I have not seen discussed much is how this will affect the fans.

Although the event claims to be free, the press release states, "To gain entry into the event, fans will go to www.ozzfest.com or www.livenation.com to find links that will direct them to special sponsor sites where tickets can be secured." I wonder what this means? Will fans need to register on LiveNation.com to get tickets in order to boost Live Nation's rumored upcoming social network? Will they need to watch a 30 second ad before they get tickets, similar to SpiralFrog's business plan?

I will be keeping an eye on this to see how this rolls out. Rocket From The Crypt did a free six week tour in the mid-90's footed by Interscope and from what I understand it really helped the band grow in popularity.

If Ozzfest is done correctly, without over commercialization, I believe this could change the way not only festivals are presented but also smaller, one or two band tours.

I find more often these days that many bands only have a Myspace (or PureVolume or TagWorld) page rather than an actual band website. When I want to see a band's upcoming tour dates, instead of going to yourband.com, I have to go to myspace.com/yourband. This may make me sound lazy, but all too often I end up at the wrong band's MySpace, a MySpace page with 1000 friends but no information or a page so mangled by a page editor that it takes 2 minutes to load. Finally, when the page does load, the layout and colors are so bad it's completely unreadable.

Has MySpace gotten so big that personal band websites are no longer important? Domain names are cheap (Under $10), webhosting is inexpensive ($5 or $6 a month), and designing your own webpage is getting easier all the time (HTML Tutorial). An individual website lets fans and promoters/labels/other music people know that a band is professional and serious about their music and not just a fly-by-night here then gone again group.

I enjoy pages with simple designs such as The Hold Steady and The Bronx. Both have full MP3s up for download, the news and tour dates are easy to find and the layout is clean and easy on the eyes. I think sites like Scott Andrew's are also doing a good job by taking that extra (and very welcome) step with continuously updated RSS feeds of band news.

I'm not saying MySpace isn't an important marketing tool to get word about your band out there, but its not the only thing a band should use to promote itself. Hopefully, some MySpace exclusive bands will look into making a website. But if not, please just stop adding so many videos, pictures, animated gifs and funky mouse cursors that I never visit the page again.

Bruce at Hypebot made an interesting post about Navio, a company which I had not yet heard of.

Apparently Navio is working on reverse engineering Apple FairPlay after being unable to successfully license the technology. Navio is working with such companies as TVT Records and Sony BMG to allow them to sell their records out of online stores other than iTunes yet still have them on iPods.

I'm sure the first thing on the minds of Navio is the ability to download single songs/albums but I hope they focus on the newer subscription models like Rhapsody 's and Yahoo's as well. I've been a happy iPod owner for about two years now however I'd be happier to trade my 20gig 3g model in for an iRiver. Not because the iRiver has any superior technology, but simply because I could utilize subscription services for my music as well.

I've been subscribing to Yahoo! Music for over a year now and I legally listen to a lot of music I would otherwise never purchase. I could put those songs on an iRiver and listen to them while away from my computer... with my iPod I can't. I'm not entirely sure of the technology behind the subscription models, but if Navio could develop a way for me to use my iPod with them it would give my old 3g a new life.